A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(58)

“No! Of course not. It’s just that . . . Well . . .” She swallowed, the convulsive movement rippling down her throat. When she spoke again her voice was quite small. “You don’t have all of the information.”
For a moment he just stared at her, not trusting himself to speak. “I spent the last three years running from his men in Europe,” he finally said. “Did you know that? No? Well, I did. And I’m sick of it. If he wanted revenge on me, he has surely wrought it. Three years of my life, stolen. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To have three years of your life ripped from you?”
Her lips parted, and for a moment he thought she might actually say yes. She looked dazed, almost hypnotized, and then finally she said, “I’m sorry. Go on.”
“I will speak to his son first. I can trust Lord Hugh. Or at least I always thought I could.” Daniel closed his eyes for a moment and simply breathed, trying to keep hold of an equilibrium that would not stay still. “I don’t know whom I can trust any longer.”
“You can—” She stopped. Swallowed. Had she been about to say that he could trust her? He looked at her closely, but she had turned away, her eyes focused on the nearby window. The curtains were drawn, but she was still staring at it as if there were something to see. “I wish you the safest of journeys,” she whispered.
“You’re angry with me,” he said.
Her head whipped around to face him. “No. No, of course not. I would never—”
“You would not have been injured had you not been in my curricle,” he cut in. He would never forgive himself for the injuries he had caused her. He needed her to know that. “It is my fault that you—”
“No!” she cried out, and she jumped from the bed, rushing toward him but then stopping abruptly. “No, that’s not true. I— I just— No,” she said, so firmly that her chin bobbed in sharp punctuation. “It’s not true.”
He stared at her. She was almost within his reach. If he leaned forward, if he stretched out his arm, he could take hold of her sleeve. He could pull her to him, and together they would melt, he into her, she into him, until they would not know where one ended and the other began.
“It’s not your fault,” she said with quiet force.
“I am the one upon whom Lord Ramsgate wishes revenge,” he reminded her softly.
“We are not—” She looked away, but not before she wiped one of her eyes with the back of her hand. “We are not responsible for the actions of others,” she said. Her voice shook with emotion, and her gaze did not meet his. “Especially not those of a madman,” she finished.
“No,” he said, his voice a strange staccato in the soft morning air. “But we do bear responsibility for those around us. Harriet, Elizabeth, and Frances—would you not have me keep them safe?”
“No,” she said, her brow coming together in distress. “That’s not what I meant. You know it wasn’t—”
“I am responsible for every person on this land,” he cut in. “For you, too, while you are here. And as long as I know that someone wishes me ill, it is my charge and obligation to make sure that I do not carry a single other person into my danger.”
She stared at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and Daniel wondered what she saw. Who she saw. The words coming from his mouth were unfamiliar. He sounded like his father, and his grandfather before him. Was this what it meant to have inherited an ancient title, to have been entrusted with the lives and livelihoods of all who resided on his land? He had been made the earl so young, and then been forced to leave England but a year later.
This was what it meant, he finally realized. This was what it all meant.
“I will not see you hurt,” he said, his voice so low it almost shook.
She closed her eyes, but then the skin at her temples wrinkled and tensed, almost as if she was in pain.
“Anne,” he said, stepping forward.
But she shook her head, almost violently, and an awful choking sob burst from her throat.
It nearly tore him in two.
“What is it?” he said, crossing the distance between them. He put his hands on her upper arms, maybe to support her . . . maybe to support himself. And then he had to stop, to simply breathe. The urge to hold her closer was overwhelming. When he’d come into her room this morning he had told himself he would not touch her, he would not come close enough to feel the way the air moved across her skin. But this—he could not bear it.
“No,” she said, her body twisting, but not enough to make him think she meant it. “Please. Go. Just go.”
“Not until you tell—”
“I can’t,” she cried out, and then she did shake him off, stepping back until they were once again separated by the chill air of the morning. “I can’t tell you what you want to hear. I can’t be with you, and I can’t even see you again. Do you understand?”
He did not answer. Because he did understand what she was saying. But he did not agree with it.
She swallowed and her hands came to cover her face, rubbing and stretching across her skin with such anguish that he almost reached out to stop her. “I can’t be with you,” she said, the words coming out with such suddenness and force that he wondered just whom she was trying to convince. “I am not . . . the person . . .”
She looked away.
“I am not a suitable woman for you,” she said to the window. “I am not of your station, and I am not—”
He waited. She’d almost said something else. He was sure of it.